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April-June, 2020

Awakening vs. Revelation

by Rev. Barbara Goodman Siegel, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

Perhaps from stories that I read about people such as Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, etc., I formed a belief that awakening and revelation were one and the same. I believed awakening and revelation to be linked together in a monumental moment where, in a flash, divine Truth is revealed and one is changed forever.

When I hear stories about ‘spontaneous awakenings,’ I think: “Yes, God, give me that!” It seems so simple and complete as opposed to all this studying, meditating, writing, journaling, teaching, learning, praying and even, at times, pleading followed by endless loops of doing it all over and over again.

Contemplating awakening vs. revelation, it occurred to me that maybe I have been confused between the two. I began looking for clarity and I thought a good place to begin would be with the definition of each term. The definition of “awake” in the 10th edition of the Merriam Webster’s dictionary is: “fully conscious, alert, and aware: not asleep.” The definition of “revelation” from the glossary of Course terms in the Circle of Atonement’s Complete and Annotated edition of A Course in Miracles is: “The experience in which God reveals Himself to us in direct, wordless experience of union with Him (traditionally called the mystical experience).”

As I contemplated the above definitions, the difference came to me in one of those “Ah ha” moments in which I realized the absolutely irrefutable truth that I am in control of my awakening and it has been occurring all my life. It was a very “Wizard of Oz” moment much like the scene where the beautiful, good, and loving fairy Godmother (the Holy Spirit) told Dorothy that she always had the power to go home. Yes, I have always had the power to awaken but the dear Holy Spirit (which I call Mother Shekhinah or might also be call the divine Mother) did the same thing that She had done with Dorothy; She let me find it out for myself.

“So, Barbara, how does this awakening happen?” you might ask. I wish I could think of a less used allegory than a mother awakening her child, but I cannot, so please forgive me.

Let us start with the child’s original intention which both the mother and the child agreed on when the child went to bed. The mother asked the child if she would agree to wake up in the morning and help her with some work that needed to be done. The child agreed. The mother told the child that she would wake her up and not to set an alarm as the mother knew that the alarm often frightened the child.

Morning came and the mother found the child in a deep sleep. The mother gently touched the child saying: “Time to wake up.” The child’s sleep was so deep that at first she didn’t hear the mother. The mother again gently touched the child. Now, the child is aroused a little, but has forgotten the agreement she made with the mother to wake her up in order to help the mother with her work. The child is a little annoyed with the mother and says: “Just give me five more minutes.” The mother agrees and leaves the room only to come back in five minutes and gently try to arouse the child again. Now, the child remembers the agreement that she is to get up and help her mother, but she is comfortable in her bed and she no longer wants to get up and help.

The mother has many children and she knows through experience that waking a child up to get them to help her with her work is not an easy process, but she continues to be very patient with the child. She is careful not to yell or admonish the child as she knows that is no way to get the child to cooperate.

Depending on the child, this process can go on over a short or very long period of time. During this time, the mother remains very patient, but also very steadfast in her attempt to awaken the child.

So it is with us. Holy Spirit (divine Mother) is continuously trying to gently awaken us. We may fight it, we may forget our agreement to awaken, we may even resent this constant nudging by the Mother, and we may keep falling back asleep, but our Mother never gives up.
Chapter 6, section V of A Course in Miracles is entitled, “The Lessons of the Holy Spirit.” In this section, God wants to communicate with his children, but He sees that, “My children sleep and must be awakened.” (T-6.V.1:8) So what does God do? He sends a Spirit so patient and loving that His children will respond to Her not with fear, but with love.

Now, as I look back on my own gentle awakening, I see all the gentle nudges; some I accepted and some I chose not to receive. It started as a young girl in my secular, Jewish family. I don’t remember as a child going to temple, but I do remember my father coming in my room every night to say bedtime prayers and I enjoyed that prayer time with him. As I got older, I found the Jewish religion to be sexist, and, although I had always been proud to be of the Jewish people, the religious doctrines did not resonate with me.

My first introduction into a spiritual approach to God was through listening to a recorded retreat by Thich Nhat Hahn, a Tibetan monk and teacher. I had never heard anything like his teachings and I thirsted for more. After that experience, I looked at various spiritual paths and meditation practices. Some I enjoyed, some were clearly not for me, and none of them totally resonated.

In 1995, after a bout with breast cancer, I went for therapy to a woman who, it turned out, was A Course in Miracles teacher and she introduced me to the Course. The philosophy of this book resonated more than anything I had encountered so far, but coming from my Jewish background, I had trouble with the language and, for a while, I put the book down.

Around 1998, I was guided to a very enlightened rabbi who taught mystical Judaism. In my experiences with Judaism, I had not heard anything like his teachings and it brought me to tears. I was with him for 10 years and during that time I realized that he was saying what the Course was saying but without the Christian terminology. I picked up the Course again so that I could better understand the Rabbi’s teachings. (Ironic, don’t you think?)

During the time I was taking the rabbi’s classes, I was guided to Pathways of Light, a non-denominational spiritual college based on A Course in Miracles. From my studies there, I received certification as an Ordained Ministerial Counselor. After the rabbi I had studied with retired, I continued to study the Course as well as teachings from a variety of teachers, some Course and some not, some Western and some Eastern. They all had one thing in common, they all spoke Truth and the music of that Truth was very familiar.

There was a very important practice I learned from my dear rabbi and that was to pick a teaching and keep studying it. He would always say that repetition is the best teacher. In the Jewish religion, the Torah (the first five books of Moses) is read from beginning to end every year. A learned man, such as my rabbi, sees beyond the stories and, with each year’s reading, sees deeper into the mystical teachings that are hidden there. I set the intention to do the same thing with the Course that my rabbi had done with the Torah. Every year I read the text and do the lessons. This is not to the exclusion of other books, but as the foundation upon which all else is set.

In January of 2015, I was guided to write a book on the lessons of the Course entitled, Finding Your Self in the Mirror: Awakening Through Mirror Affirmations for the 365 Lessons of A Course in Miracles. The book took me three years to complete and went onto Amazon January of 2018. It has had a very quiet, little life thus far. I won’t lie to you, my ego self wanted it to be a best seller and sent me into fits of anxiety on how and where I should be marketing it. When I could no longer tolerate being in an almost constant state of anxiety, I made the choice to listen to the gentle voice of Mother Shekhinah telling me to let the marketing go and, as Lesson 34 states: “…see peace instead of this.”

All this brings me to the present day. I started the Text and the Workbook Lessons again on the first of January. I have also been guided to listen to and read new, younger teachers who are bringing in the Divine Feminine. And in the midst of the week in which I was writing this article, clarity was given me between revelation and awakening.

First, I was given a huge revelation into the oneness of all. I am using the term as I described it earlier, and I must tell you that the intense, mystical experience scared the heck out of me. I laughed to myself and said to my dear Mother Shekhinah: “Okay, I see why revelation is not just given out for the asking. For most of us, it would just be too scary to be given true vision all at once.”

Secondly, while journaling, I was given these words: “Gentle awakening is the whole book, yours and mine. Yours provides a very personal, tangible process which will be helpful to many who have a hard time with (what will seem to them) the more abstract lessons of the Course. Others will do very well with the instructions in my workbook and others may need an entirely different curriculum. But, the most important thing to remember is that it is an inside job. Revelation is from God, awakening is being aware of what is going on in your mind.”

(Note to reader: I never identified the voice guiding me as Jesus when I wrote my book. The above transmission is the first time a message has clearly been from him because of his reference to A Course in Miracles.)

I was given a great gift of knowing that awakening is up to me. It is up to me to be conscious of what I think, what I read, what I watch, and what I say. It is up to me to correct myself when I have a loveless thought about myself or a sister or brother and correct it immediately by knowing that we are both holy. It is up to me to act with love and integrity. It is up to me to stay conscious and to become aware when I have fallen back to sleep, which, I must admit, still happens more frequently than I would wish. I have been given the choice to awaken and it is up to me.

© 2020, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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